SANTA CLARA, CA, Jun 14 (MARKET WIRE) —
SeaMicro(TM), a Silicon Valley pioneer of low power server technology,
today emerged from stealth mode to launch a new Internet-optimized
x86-server that reduces by 75 percent the power and space used by
servers. In development for three years, the SM10000(TM) is the ultimate
re-think of the volume server. Specifically optimized for the workloads
and traffic patterns of the Internet, SeaMicro’s SM10000 integrates 512
Intel(R) Atom(TM) processors with Ethernet switching, server management
and application load-balancing to create a “plug and play”
standards-based server that dramatically reduces power draw and footprint
without requiring any modifications to existing software. The key
benefits of the SM10000 include:
– using one-quarter of the power and taking one-quarter of the space to
do the same work as the best-in-class volume server,
– industry leading density: 2,048 central processing units (CPUs) per
standard rack,
– drop-in adoption by running off-the-shelf OSs and applications without
change,
– flexible architecture that can support any CPU.
Reports from Google show that if current power trends continue, the
cost of energy consumed by a server during its lifetime could surpass the
initial purchase cost. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency
reports that volume servers consume more than one percent of the total
electricity in the US — representing billions of dollars in wasted
operating expense each year.
Addressing the Fundamental Server Design Mismatch
Historically, servers
were designed to quickly solve a relatively small number of very hard
problems. The Internet, however, changed this. In the Internet data
center, the challenge is to handle millions of relatively small,
independent tasks like those needed for searching, social networking,
viewing web pages, and checking email. Volume servers failed to adapt to
this fundamental change. This mismatch between volume servers and the now
dominant Internet workload is the primary cause of the rapid increase in
server power consumption and is responsible for the multi-billion dollar
power problem in the data center. A completely new server design
optimized for today’s data center was necessary.
Beyond the fundamental mismatch between today’s servers and the dominant
workload, SeaMicro made another critical observation that set the stage
for massive reductions in server power. The CPU, usually the focus of
power reduction efforts, consumes only one third of the power in a
server. This means that large improvements in the CPU have only modest
impact on the total power consumed by a server. In order to achieve
large-scale power reductions, SeaMicro technology focused on the
two-thirds power consumed by the non-CPU components. To this end,
SeaMicro transformed the volume server into a high density, low power,
single-box cluster computer, optimized for Internet traffic. SeaMicro
further improved total cost of ownership and reduced the power consumed
in a data center solution by integrating the functionality traditionally
found in an entire data center rack — compute, storage, networking,
server management and load balancing — into a single, low-power system.
Building on the dramatic reductions in power achieved at the system
level, SeaMicro was then able to leverage low power CPUs, such as Intel’s
Atom processor. Typically used for mobile devices and the smallest
laptops, Intel’s Atom is the most efficient CPU for handling Internet
workloads, which are now the most common in the data center.
SeaMicro Technology Innovations
Three primary technology innovations
define the system:
– SeaMicro invented and patented a new technique in CPU I/O
virtualization, which dramatically reduces non-CPU power draw by
eliminating 90 percent of the components from the motherboard. This
CPU I/O virtualization allows SeaMicro to shrink a server motherboard
from the size of a pizza box to the size of a credit card.
– SeaMicro designed a supercomputer-style interconnect fabric that can
link 512 mini-motherboards into a single system with an
order-of-magnitude reduction in power draw and space. This fabric
provides 1.28 terabits per-second throughput, with complete security
and redundancy. Additionally, the architecture can support any CPU
instruction set and any protocol, including Ethernet, fibre channel,
and data center Ethernet.
– SeaMicro also invented Dynamic Compute Allocation Technology(TM)
(DCAT). DCAT combines CPU management and load balancing, allowing the
SM10000 to dynamically allocate workloads to specific CPUs on the
basis of power-usage metrics. This ensures that the active CPUs
operate in the most energy-efficient utilization ranges. In addition,
DCAT technology enables compute pooling — allowing the user to create
pools of compute for a given application. This enables the user to
dynamically add compute resources to the pool based on predefined
utilization thresholds.
Seamless Integration into Current Data Center Environments
The
SM10000 simplifies data center operations and management by eliminating
layers of switches, terminal servers and load-balancing devices. The
system is built on standards-based x86 CPUs, which means it is plug and
play — customers can deploy the SM10000 without modifications to
existing operating systems, application software or management tools.
SeaMicro’s SM10000 system is comprised of:
– 512 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processors
– 1 terabyte of DRAM
– 0 – 64 SATA solid state or hard disk drives
– 8 – 64 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks; or 2 – 16 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks
– The entire system is 10 rack units tall (17.5 inches tall).
SeaMicro was founded by industry veterans with expertise in building
large data centers and cluster computers. They come from leading
technology companies including Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Sun
Microsystems, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The company has
raised $25 million from strategic partners and venture capitalists
including Khosla Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Crosslink Capital.
SeaMicro was also awarded a $9.3 million grant from the Department of
Energy, which was the largest grant awarded to a server company in the
Information and Communication Technology Sector.
The SeaMicro SM10000 will be generally available July 30, 2010 in the
U.S. and select international locations. The list price for a base
configuration is $139,000. More information on SeaMicro and the SM10000
is available on its new web site, also launched today, at
www.seamicro.com.
About SeaMicro
SeaMicro is transforming the data center landscape by
building servers that draw one-quarter the power and take one-quarter the
space of traditional servers. By delivering breakthrough innovations
borne of multiple technology domains — CPU design, virtualization,
supercomputing and networking — SeaMicro has created a new server
architecture purpose-built for scale out infrastructures such as those
found in the web-tier, online gaming, search and index computation.
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